My brother lugged two kids and two laptops from Phoenix. At various times through the day today, I’ve been surrounded by all four of them.
This particular episode involves a Dell Inspiron 600m. I’ve never seen a display look like this. Either the LCD is totally shot, or the video card is shot. After some diagnostics with Dell tech support, it’s the video card. Which means a new motherboard.
During the diagnosis, the laptop ceases to boot past the Windows screen, repeatedly bringing up a BSOD about the master partition. Pulling out my trusty new Slax bootable USB key, I can access the data on the HDD, so the drive controller and drive are OK. As long as the drive is OK, the controller doesn’t matter—we’ll have a new one soon anyway, with the rest of the motherboard.
So, it’s off to eBay to locate a new motherboard, and then a Windows restore once he ships me the CDs. Looks like he’s going home with 2 kids and 1 laptop.